The Curious Incident

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“But that’s not the way I am and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” ‘The Curious Incident… shows that all people are capable of change if they have a goal they really care about’. Discuss. In The Curious Incident… Christopher’s mother writes to her son that she left partly because of the continual conflicts between her and Christopher and Christopher’s father. She admits she is short tempered and feels pessimistic about her power to change this. However, by the end of the novel she is making an effort to take control over her emotions: she sees a doctor and receives medication for her depression, and attempts to be patient in dealing with Christopher. Similarly, Christopher’s father vows to regain Christopher’s trust by always being truthful, and Christopher himself, by making the journey to London, shows that he is able to overcome some aspect of his condition. Each of these characters tries to take control of their ‘behavioural problems’ in order to rebuild relationships that are important to them. Judy Boone, Christopher’s mother believes she is incapable of change when she writes this in the second letter that Christopher discovers. She is trying to explain to her son some months after leaving her husband and Christopher that she is not a very good mother. She says that she is not a ‘pacient person’ like Christopher’s father. This letter reveals that her writing style is somewhat like Christopher’s, in that she often writes in long yet simplistic sentences. Unlike Christopher though, she is capable of describing her emotions. She recognises that she got angry and upset because she was unable to handle Christopher’s behaviour when they went shopping at Christmas. The use of language and spelling also indicates that she is not a highly educated person. These two factors, her similarity to Christopher and her lack of intelligence, suggest why she
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